The Mystery of sin and God the Benevolent
McDougallL Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:04 am
Enigma of the existence of evil and the Garden of Eden and God the Benevolent
I will try in my own humble way to answer this most difficult question
How can we ever reconcile the fact of sin/ evil, suffering and pain, existing side by side with a benevolent holy God of light and love?
Let us go back to the story of the Garden of Eden God says to Adam in Gen1, Chap. 2 Verse. 17, “that he may eat of any tree except the “tree of knowledge of good and evil".
Note; There was a tree of knowledge of both Good and evil, so Evil existed before Adam and the Garden of Eden. Namely in the form of Satan!
However, God being all-knowing knows before hand that Adam is going to fail the test so why did he give it to him in the first place? Because he wanted us to have a free will and not be robots!!.
I don’t buy this, completely, as God could easily given Adam absolute free rain and said to him “Adam you can do anything you want without any reservations. But then sin as well as good would have had to be approved by God and God is Holy in the absolute and thus could never had permitted sin and evil to exist forever in his domain of paradise and heaven
But God wanted to test, teach and make mankind worthy so he allowed sin to enter our world.
Nevertheless, GOD in his infinite wisdom goes ahead and gives Adam (and Eve) a test he knows they are going to fail, why? Was this fair seeing the awful consequences for humanity down through the age?
Yes absolutely as I will describe later in this essay
Let us go back to the origin of evil, where did it come from.
Isaiah Chapt. 45 Verse 7 God says I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil I God do all these things. GOD made everything so he must have made evil but why?
Let us go back to Adam and the pampered environment of the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve had remained and by obeyed God completely. ( remember God knew they would not obey him) they would have existed forever in a paradise setting of beauty warmth, comfort, never ever have to toil work just reach out and eat do any thing they want . No pain no gain!
This would be wonderful for say a hundred years or a thousand years, but having never ever experienced cold they could not appreciate warmth, never being hungry never appreciate food never being thirsty they would not appreciate the taste and satisfaction of sparking water , never knowing hate the would not know what love was.
They would have existed in a one -sided reality never knowing the opposite. But God knew that they must know evil, pain and sorrow to become fully functional free thinking beings similar to him in consciousness and indeed co- creators of their own domain and reality
Think?, after countless years what would at first be a wonderful paradise to Adam and Eve would become a boring non -challenging never changing hell. Therefore, God simply had to banish them into the world or toil sorrow and hardship to give meaning and purpose to their lives.
So God being fair and just gave them the test, which they failed and drove them out into the present reality world of thorns, cold, dark, pain, evil etc, etc. This reality is based on a duality that God created, we know evil so we know the beauty of goodness; we know truth so we can hate the lie, and we experience the light so that we know dark.
Humanity can look back on a paradise lost with a longing to for the eternal wonder and beauty of the original Eden, which they would love and rejoice as paradise regained
I do not for one moment believe the nonsense that there is an eternal battle between God and the Satan and that this being is almost Almighty Gods equal. Satan can only do what God permits him to do as we read in the book of Job.
However, God permits or allows the below dualities for our own good.
Good and evil
Light and dark
Truth and lie
Deception and honesty
Love and hate
War and Peace
Positive and negative
Faith and despair
Holiness and depravity
Warm and cool
Life and death
And so on and so on
God bless
Alan
Any Comments please?
McDougallL Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:04 am
Enigma of the existence of evil and the Garden of Eden and God the Benevolent
I will try in my own humble way to answer this most difficult question
How can we ever reconcile the fact of sin/ evil, suffering and pain, existing side by side with a benevolent holy God of light and love?
Let us go back to the story of the Garden of Eden God says to Adam in Gen1, Chap. 2 Verse. 17, “that he may eat of any tree except the “tree of knowledge of good and evil".
Note; There was a tree of knowledge of both Good and evil, so Evil existed before Adam and the Garden of Eden. Namely in the form of Satan!
However, God being all-knowing knows before hand that Adam is going to fail the test so why did he give it to him in the first place? Because he wanted us to have a free will and not be robots!!.
I don’t buy this, completely, as God could easily given Adam absolute free rain and said to him “Adam you can do anything you want without any reservations. But then sin as well as good would have had to be approved by God and God is Holy in the absolute and thus could never had permitted sin and evil to exist forever in his domain of paradise and heaven
But God wanted to test, teach and make mankind worthy so he allowed sin to enter our world.
Nevertheless, GOD in his infinite wisdom goes ahead and gives Adam (and Eve) a test he knows they are going to fail, why? Was this fair seeing the awful consequences for humanity down through the age?
Yes absolutely as I will describe later in this essay
Let us go back to the origin of evil, where did it come from.
Isaiah Chapt. 45 Verse 7 God says I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil I God do all these things. GOD made everything so he must have made evil but why?
Let us go back to Adam and the pampered environment of the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve had remained and by obeyed God completely. ( remember God knew they would not obey him) they would have existed forever in a paradise setting of beauty warmth, comfort, never ever have to toil work just reach out and eat do any thing they want . No pain no gain!
This would be wonderful for say a hundred years or a thousand years, but having never ever experienced cold they could not appreciate warmth, never being hungry never appreciate food never being thirsty they would not appreciate the taste and satisfaction of sparking water , never knowing hate the would not know what love was.
They would have existed in a one -sided reality never knowing the opposite. But God knew that they must know evil, pain and sorrow to become fully functional free thinking beings similar to him in consciousness and indeed co- creators of their own domain and reality
Think?, after countless years what would at first be a wonderful paradise to Adam and Eve would become a boring non -challenging never changing hell. Therefore, God simply had to banish them into the world or toil sorrow and hardship to give meaning and purpose to their lives.
So God being fair and just gave them the test, which they failed and drove them out into the present reality world of thorns, cold, dark, pain, evil etc, etc. This reality is based on a duality that God created, we know evil so we know the beauty of goodness; we know truth so we can hate the lie, and we experience the light so that we know dark.
Humanity can look back on a paradise lost with a longing to for the eternal wonder and beauty of the original Eden, which they would love and rejoice as paradise regained
I do not for one moment believe the nonsense that there is an eternal battle between God and the Satan and that this being is almost Almighty Gods equal. Satan can only do what God permits him to do as we read in the book of Job.
However, God permits or allows the below dualities for our own good.
Good and evil
Light and dark
Truth and lie
Deception and honesty
Love and hate
War and Peace
Positive and negative
Faith and despair
Holiness and depravity
Warm and cool
Life and death
And so on and so on
God bless
Alan
Any Comments please?
